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Passionate Paradox

As we have spent this past few weeks in the States, our family has been so blessed to be surrounded by love and support from our community. Everyone has at some point shared the same sentiment. We are so unbelievably excited to be in the US and simultaneously yearning to return to Lebanon. Expectantly wishing for the time we can once again be amongst our refugees. Desperate to wake up amongst a nation of people who have begun to embrace the hope of Jesus even if this world has nothing left to offer.

Our life is a paradox, which seems only fitting since we worship a God who makes harmony from conflict. Fully God and fully man. Who wept while never ceasing to rejoice. In my devotional time four years ago I adapted a missionary poem called “Ants in the Sugar Bowl” about the challenges of working cross culturally while embracing the beauty of working in our father’s field. It seemed appropriate to share it now as we continue to live as strangers in a familiar land and prepare to return to our foreign home.

So I send you

To long hours and exhausting days

To garbage piled higher and higher every hour

To sweltering summers and frigid winters

To uncomfortable cars, smelly taxis, and crowded buses

To uncertain water and sporadic electricity

To exchange yes and no for maybe and I have no idea

To poverty you didn’t believe existed

To camps of humanity that stretch to the horizon

To abandoned construction sites filled with homeless families

To hundreds of thousands of children without education

To know and work with people who have lost everything

To a country suffocating from smog, refuse, and the invading world

To stare into the eyes of men and women preparing to die after being refused treatment

To buildings still bleeding rubble from decades of bullets and shrapnel

To people trapped living illegally with no hope of a future

So I send you, and I expect you to adjust

So I send you

To people desperate to know the God who walks the streets of the slum

To people who will give from their poverty

To finally feel you are worthy of the calling

To learn about yourself and the culture that reared you

To know God and make Him known to those who know Him not

To rooms too crowded to sit with people wanting only to hear the name of Jesus

To streets that only the deity of Christ would walk

To the sound of worship of native people in native languages with national music

To a national church that finally woke up

To songs that get louder when the electricity goes out

To chapels and churches bursting with seas of veiled women

To the cry from the Mosque being drowned out by the sound of praise

To spirits unbroken and hearts unshaken in the face of insurmountable odds

2 thoughts on “Passionate Paradox”

Annie, that is beautiful! It really gives such a visual image to your calling & mission, to all mission. I have so much respect for you and Louis for following Gods call. We love you guys. We missed you Sunday, hope all is well. See you soon.